A new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit sponsored by Cisco SystemsMay 2007

Innovation—the application of knowledge in a novel way, primarily for economic benefit—is becoming increasingly important for companies and governments. Business executives regard it as a vital weapon in fending off their corporate competitors. Government policymak­ers see the need for an innovative environment if their countries’ economies are to grow.

But how important is innovation, which countries innovate better than others, and why? To find out, the Economist Intelligence Unit undertook two parallel research studies in a programme sponsored by Cisco. The first was a worldwide survey of 485 senior executives to gauge a better understanding of the drivers of innovation and their relative impor­tance. The second was a ranking of 82 of the world’s economies by innovation performance during 2002-06, with a forecast for the countries
to 2011.

Download
the report for free. Download the electronic version of the Innovation: Transforming the way business creates free of charge. [1,236 KB] Download background documentation for free. The background documentation provides a summary on innovation and growth as well as the innovation indices based on the Business Environment Rankings from the Economist Intelligence Unit.
[491 KB]

Among the study’s findings:

Japan, Switzerland, the US and Sweden are the world’s top four innovators among the 82 economies.

Sizeable spending on R&D is likely to yield divi¬dends in terms of new products and services. Among firms that have R&D spending equal to at least 5% of their revenue, 45% of respondents perform better than their peers; this compares with 35% of the firms that spend less than 5% of revenue on R&D.

A broad range of factors were cited in explaining what makes a country innovative, with the top determinants being technical skills of the workforce (92% of respondents) and quality of IT/telecommunications infrastructure.

Governments and companies are no longer paying lip service to innovation, if they ever did. Heightened global competition is forcing both to find new ways to increase productivity. They have little choice but to innovate, or at least to encourage the innovators.

Download
the report for free. Download the electronic version of the Innovation: Transforming the way business creates free of charge. [1,236 KB] Download background documentation for free. The background documentation provides a summary on innovation and growth as well as the innovation indices based on the Business Environment Rankings from the Economist Intelligence Unit.
[491 KB]

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